Welcome - About Live and Loud!

Live and Loud! began as a fortnightly internet radio show taking old unreleased live concert recordings I could find and working to repair and improve them - fixing tape hiss, noise, tape drop out, clicks, speed variations, defects - before improving the sound quality by EQing the sound to bring out the instruments as clearly as possible. These are now made directly available to download for free to reach as many fans of the music as possible.

Depending on the quality of the original recording, these can often be made to sound almost like commercial recordings - but of course I can't guarantee that for every show. What I can guarantee is it will sound far better than the original files available which have been floating around the internet and on bootleg recordings for many years. Almost all are either "soundboard" recordings taken directly from the mixing desk used at the gig on the night - or old FM radio recordings. A few gigs, if they are of special historical importance, make an appearance even if they were recorded from the audience.

Do your ears a favour and listen on headphones or good speakers to get most benefit - laptop speakers will always sound pretty poor by comparison.

All shows still available are listed, including a link to download the remastered show for free. If you want the shows in lossless format, or as separate tagged files, head over to the Rewards for Donations page and see how you can get a lot for very little!

And finally... These are great fun to listen to but DO NOT replace original releases - support these artists and buy their music. There is nothing you can go and buy in a regular record store here. If a gig is made available as a regular release, then it will be removed (as a couple have been already).

Pages

Sunday, 27 November 2016

This time, it’s a debut on Live and Loud! for Thomas Dolby with a show taken from his The Flat Earth tour of 1984.

I had 3 different versions of this recording, all at different bit rates. 2 of the recordings had some different tracks from each other but were higher quality than the 3rd version which had all the recorded tracks on. So I ended up piecing the best of the 2 together to form 1 complete recording. If you listen carefully you can perhaps play "spot the difference" and see where the joins are! But its all come together well so hopefully most of you won't be able to tell. :-)

Careful EQ of each source separately took some time, as did the editing of the tracks together so they're not glaringly obvious - but it sounds great now, superb stereo and crystal clear. 1 song, Airwaves, does fade out and back in at 1 point, thanks to the original cassette recording running out and needing to be turned over!

Is it all the tracks played? Information and pictures of that 1984 tour seem quite hard to find but maybe not; its about an hour and 10 minutes long. Its certainly all the tracks that I can find that were recorded though, including an unused, lower quality soundboard. Information is so scarce that a source I often use to confirm tour information didn't have this gig listed at all (it does now; I added it).

The show is now available to download exclusively for free here as 1 MP3 file. Or, if you would like to have separate tagged MP3s, or even lossless files in FLAC format, head on over to the Donations tab to see how you can obtain these for a very small donation towards the site costs.

Setlist
The Flat Earth (spoken intro)
White City
Dissidents
The Flat Earth
One Of Our Submarines Is Missing
Puppet Theatre
New Toy
Airwaves
I Scare Myself
Hyperactive!
Europa And The Pirate Twins
She Blinded Me With Science

Friday, 4 November 2016

Another outing for Devo, and this is a really energetic performance from the original spud boys! Their 3rd album - Freedom of Choice - had just been released in May 1980 and Devo went on a tour in support of the album which lasted from May until August and included dates in Japan, mainland Europe, the UK, the USA and Canada. This was also the tour which saw them wearing the famous red energy domes for the first time.

This recording was in generally good shape but had a couple of weird moments with noise lasting several seconds over the recording, which took some getting rid of. After that I spent a few hours with EQ which has really paid dividends, giving clarity and power to all the instruments. I finished off with some mastering tools and I'm sure you'll enjoy the end result. 20 tracks of brilliance as the energy levels get pumped up.

*Update 2018* While
preparing this old show as separate files for a donator to the site, I
found I could now improve the sound quality further, over what I’d
originally done to the recording several years ago. You can now download
this new version (as of 2018) HERE as 1 new 320kbps MP3 file.

If you would like to have separate tagged MP3s, or even lossless files in FLAC format of the new version, head on over to the Donations tab to see how you can obtain these for a very small donation towards the site costs.

Tuesday, 1 November 2016

This time, it’s a debut on Live and Loud! for Greek composer Vangelis.

In 1991 Vangelis was asked by the Dutch ministry of Economic Affairs to provide the highlight of an event being held in Rotterdam and a concert was organised at the docks, with Vangelis performing outdoors to backing tracks with animations and lasers being projected onto nearby buildings. It was unfortunately a relatively short concert for the 150000 people who were said to have attended; what is here would indeed appear to be the whole thing - an encore had been planned but apparently was abandoned due to the awful weather on the night (as the night wore on, the rain got worse and worse).

This is originally an FM recording - I spent about an hour alone on repairing a rather bad bit of tape damage to the original recording (its not gone completely but that part doesn't disappear anymore). Then it was some careful EQ to separate out the instruments a bit and give greater clarity, reducing the harsh high end frequencies and restoring the lower end.

The show is now available to download exclusively for free here as 1 MP3 file. Or, if you would like to have separate tagged MP3s, or even lossless files in FLAC format, head on over to the Donations tab to see how you can obtain these for a very small donation towards the site costs.

Donations

All shows are free to download of course! However, if you do wish to donate towards the site's running costs (even £1) you can get properly tagged and separated FLACs and MP3s for every show in return! Check out the "Rewards for Donations" tab for details. You can donate at this link. Thank you.